Business Motivation Strategies

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Business Motivation Strategies

Introduction

Motivation is a known determinant of employee performance in the corporate environment given its ability to increase commitment. In this, the concept of motivation becomes imperative in the workplace. Health sector workers are unique in both individual and organizational requirements that revolve around potential, values, culture, and objectives. X’s Dental clinic as the study points out represents an organization that is recording falling scores in employee performance. The output is because of the health facility employing poor or ineffective motivational strategies. The business employs only money in the form of bonuses and wages as the sole motivation factor. Integrating 20 employees in the research, data highlights that despite increased worker commitment at the beginning, the strategy cannot ascertain maintenance of employee commitment in the long term. The free lunch and rare vacation trips that the company offers are also inadequate in motivating the workers. Motivation is a complex and dynamic concept to capture necessitating the integration of various strategies simultaneously.

Analysis on why X’s Clinic Requires Application of other Motivational Strategies

People management in the current economic environment is a critical executive function in any organization irrespective of operational divergences. Ukpere and Ukandu (11522) argue that a well-managed company will consider its workers rather than solely focus on its financial capital as the main foundation. Therefore, to capture corporate goals and industry development, an organization should create a workplace environment characterized by an aura of commitment, satisfaction and cooperation with employees through various policies and company strategies (Ukpere and Ukandu 11522). Indeed, performance excellence extends beyond financial reporting to encompass non-fiscal predictors such as quality, delivery, consumer satisfaction and employee growth. X’s Dental Clinic fails to create the argued workplace atmosphere in its poor policies. In one, the use of money as the sole motivator programs the workers to perceive revenue generation as the main objective for performance. As seen in one of the responses in the interview, the employee states “Just wait until the end of the month and get the salaries, no need to care about anything.” The statement depicts the existence of a poor workplace culture based on wages.

Two principal reasons that facilitate capture of motivation are personal and organizational goals. The workplace environment should ensure that employees gain satisfaction through self-development opportunities. According to the study performed using a score of ten, the mean score for self-actualization was 6.45. The output was an average score of personal development opportunities offered at X’s Dental Clinic. The clinic had superior scores in employee safety, social welfare, psychology and esteem. However, its lack of self-actualization avenues meant that employees did not perceive of having a future in the clinic resulting in low commitment levels. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, self-actualization is fully achieved when the society rewards motivation through love, esteem and other social needs (McLeod 1). An organization must create an environment where employees individually grow and gain the opportunity to help each other grow (transcendence needs) (McLeod 1). Money as a motivational factor does not establish love or esteem for employees because it only covers their material requirements.

Gopal and Chowdhury (2) argue that the primary influences on corporate effectiveness are motivation and leadership. The applied leadership style has an extensive influence on worker dedication and overall commitment. Leadership and motivation have a direct relationship as transformational leadership is recorded to improve subordinates’ interests (Almansour 161). An organization is a communal set up where the leader is at the helm of interactive matters giving rationality, coordination, and direction. From the data collected, X’s Dental Clinic leadership style does not maximize employee motivation given its failure to direct in several situations such as crisis events. From the data, 85% of employees believed the leadership style was inadaptable to situational changes. 60% of the employees perceived their leader as unapproachable given his lack of paternalistic attributes. The context is added by the 35% of employees who perceived the leader as oppressive. One of the rare positives was in the 70% of employees that felt the workplace was democratic in employee related decision making. Another merit in the leadership style as gotten from the interview is in the leader individually motivating the employees to go to work on Sundays to derive fiscal bonuses. The extra commitment displayed by the leader is projected to his employees.

Overall, the argument is that X’s Dental Clinic in its motivation strategy is ineffective as it establishes a culture of bribery in the employees to perform. Cherry refers to this strategy as extrinsic motivation where employees are motivated to engage in an activity to avoid punishment or receive a reward (Cherry 2). The interview provides a good example of this situation in the clinic where workers perform awaiting the end of the month to receive their wages (reward). Action is not based on morality, derivation of pleasure or growth of individual skill. In this, productivity lowers with time as depicted in the customer decline from 60000 in 2010 to 50000 in 2014. Literature teaches that in most situations, intrinsic motivation where an individual derives incentive from within to be the most beneficial influence on performance. According to Cherry, offering too many external prizes as motivation basis results in a decline in intrinsic motivation (3). This in turn also lowers their self-actualization capacities.

Discussion and Recommendations

As per the data collected and analyzed the predominant need for X’s Dental Clinic is the inclusion of non-financial strategies in employee motivation. Sundheim (1) argues that employees react in accordance to the manner in which they are motivated. When an organization acquires, develops and motivates the right employee base, the machine moves and functions smoothly. To identify the proper motivational strategies to apply, X’s Dental Clinic must first perform a study to understand the factors that interest its unique employee base. Literature teaches that workers come from divergent background meaning that they equally have different values, beliefs, cultures, goals and preferences. This follows Herzberg’s prompt in the two-factor theory, “What do people want from their jobs?” (Ukpere and Ukandu 11522) An organization must derive the factors that are common to the employees in the motivation strategy development.

Despite past literature arguing that extrinsic motivation is not the best for employee stimulation, current studies argue that neither intrinsic nor extrinsic factors are adequate for full stimulation (McLeod 4). For self-driven behavior, organizations need to employ both extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Extrinsic motivation is beneficial in a number of ways that intrinsic motivation is not. For instance, external rewards have the ability to induce engagement and interest in matters in which a person had no prior concern (Cherry 4). In this, extrinsic rewards can be applied to stimulate employees to develop new skills, knowledge or behavior. Given that a worker develops a new trade, the organization benefits from the inner stimulus that comes from the employee. This is because the learned employee has the drive to pursue the new skill (Cherry 4). External rewards can also act as sources of feedback informing employees on performance avenues that require reinforcement. In this, the clinic does not give compensation to poor performing employees.

However, extrinsic motivation should be avoided in events where workers already find satisfaction in a given activity. Workers at the Dental Clinic already derive satisfaction from the fiscal reward that is the salary. Offering bonuses only transforms the reward from adequate to excess resulting in a more adverse workplace culture. The rewards may also turn a play activity into a working one negating its motivational capacity (Cherry 5). Therefore, despite intrinsic stimulation being the prime motivational approach, external rewards are included in the completion of tasks where there was no prior knowledge or interest. The unexpected reward does not mitigate internal stimulus in the employee, but boosts. The rewards drive an employee to be more creative while working on the project. The novel level of creativity then turns and becomes the strongest pervasive driver of performance (Ukpere and Ukandu 11523).

X’s Clinic work environment should be a motivating factor in itself. The working space does contribute to the commitment levels in workers. For instance, the clinic should not establish long working hours without suitable breaks, null recognition of employees for tasks completed or aggressive management. McLeod (5) informs that imposing too many rules, laws, and formalities will impede the organizational ability to stimulate members of staff. In this, the leader must learn how best to balance leadership styles that are situational, transactional, transformation, autocratic and democratic. The management style is chosen by the nature of the event or present conditions as opposed to routine (Almansour 164). The choice is done through discerning individual and employee beliefs, preferences and values while integrating the organizational culture (Almansour 164). This follows Taylor’s rules of scientific management where simple habits or rules of thumb are replaced by rational and calculated methods to improve efficiency and overall performance. The right job has its correct way of action.

Conclusion

X’s Dental clinic needs to integrate more stimulation strategies given that impetus is a complex and dynamic concept to capture. The faces a pattern of employee commitment declines despite investing in fiscal rewards. Using only monetary rewards, the firm fails to create a workplace environment that facilitates individual satisfaction, which is one of the factors in motivation. Employees do not gain satisfaction because they lack self-development opportunities. The leadership style applied by the firm also does not spur interest in the employees. In this, the firm must first identify the unique factors that peak the interest of its employees both at the individual and group levels. The information is then applied to design the best combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors to be integrated. Through scientific management, leadership styles are modified to become adaptable to the divergent scenarios that require different supervision approaches. Lastly, the organization ensures that it does not have in place too many laws, rules and policies that constrain employee freedom to become creative and innovative.

Works Cited

Almansour, Yaser. The Relationship between Leadership Styles and Motivation of Managers Conceptual Framework. Journal of Arts, Science and Commerce. 3 (1), 2012. 161-166. Print.

Cherry, Kendra. What are the Difference between Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation? Psychology Health. 15 January 2016. Web. 20 January 2016. <http://psychology.about.com/od/motivation/f/difference-between-extrinsic-and-intrinsic-motivation.htm>

Gopal, R. and Rima Chowdhury. Leadership Styles and Employee Motivation: An Empirical Investigation in Leading Oil Company in India. International Journal of Research in Business Management. 2 (5), 2014. 1-10. Print.

McLeod, Saul. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Simple Psychology. 17 September 2007. Web. 20 January 2016. <http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html>

Sundheim, Ken. What Really Motivates Employees? Forbes Entrepreneurs. 26 November 2013. Web. 20 January 2016. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/kensundheim/2013/11/26/what-really-motivates-employees/#2715e4857a0b37c5ea765297>

Ukpere, Wilfred and Nnenna Ukandu. Strategies to Improve the Level of Employee Motivation in the Fast Food Outlets in Cape Town, South Africa. African Journal of Business Management. 5 (28). 2011. 11521-11531. Print.